


The Alternative To Love

by Person



Category: Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-04-06
Updated: 2010-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-08 18:03:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/78109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Person/pseuds/Person
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amber thought that she had them all wrapped around her little finger.  But Luigi had plans on his own, and letting his sister hog the spotlight for a while gave him all the time in the world to get his key piece into place while nobody's looking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally written last year for the fic_on_demand community over on livejournal's June fic-a-day challenge. If you don't want to wait for me to post new parts you _can_ head over there and find a "completed" version of it. _But_, that's not the version that's going to be posted over here, and I really don't recommend doing that (well, you go ahead through to the last section since it'll be the same up until then, it's just that one part I suggest holding out on). Last year I ran out of June to write in, and had to bring the story to a pretty abrupt ending in the place I'd marked in my outline as the earliest possible spot I could wrap things up if needed. The version here will actually be the full one, through to the (hopefully) much more satisfying real ending.
> 
> It just took me almost a year to actually get on with it because it took me that long to stop feeling guilty at the thought of adding onto a story written for a time-based challenge after the time limit had passed.

Amber thought she had them all wrapped around her little finger. With their dad dead and not one of them named his rightful heir she actually thought she could slip under the radar in all the confusion and steal the whole fucking company right out from under his nose.

Well, he'd let her go right on thinking that. She seemed to have forgotten that he was Luigi _fucking_ Largo, the only one of the three of them to inherit a god-damned brain from their dad instead of somehow finding a way to wander through life with an empty skull. If she'd had any sense at all she would have realized that he'd only be playing along like a good boy if he had a plan of his own running in the background; it was useful for him that she didn't.

He'd realized how useful it would be to let her take the spotlight first practically from the minute she'd started grabbing for it. Every sycophantic organ-junkie who would have fallen all over themselves just for a chance to lick up the sweat from his dad's nuts and couldn't stand to see anyone else, _especially_ anyone who Rotti hadn't chosen himself, leading GeneCo would pile their hate on the first person to take his spot, and be a hell of a lot less bitchy about whoever kicked the 'usurper' out of their seat. Every fucking peasant who started throwing around words like 'evil' or 'monsters' every time they had trouble scrounging up enough cash to make a payment would be softened up by Amber's 'kinder and gentler GeneCo' campaign without Luigi himself having to do any of the hard work, and once he announced that his first plan as president was getting rid of the Repo Men they'd practically be creaming their pants over him. They were all too afraid of the big, bad, organ-stealing boogeyman to focus on the fact that he'd be getting rid of the payment plans targeted towards the dirt poor assholes most likely to go delinquent on their payments along with them. And it would give Pavi a chance to get used to the idea that he was the last and least of their family in business affairs, the spot that should have been his right from the start even if Amber _was_ younger, and once the idea was firmly in what passed for a mind with him it wouldn't matter if the people in first and second place switched.

As for Amber herself... well, she was the best possible choice as the buffer between his dad's presidency and his own. No matter how good of a face she was managing to keep up in public, she was still a Z-junkie. It wasn't as if it would be hard to wrest control from someone who spent most of the day as a complete fucking zombie.

Besides all that, it gave him time to work on his very own secret weapon, and for once that didn't mean a knife.

His brother and sister were both content to completely forget about little Shilo Wallace. He couldn't blame them; it was fucking _enraging_ to think about how close they'd come to losing everything because of some god-damned game their father decided to play. But thousands of people had watched Rotti declare her his chosen heir from the audience, _millions_ more saw it as that night's opera went on to become the most popular holorecording in history, and that right there lead to the potential for one hell of a tool in the hands for anyone who knew the right way to use it.

And not only was Luigi the only one of them smart enough to realize that, he was _also_ the only one of them with a chance in hell of winning her to his side. He'd watched the security recordings his dad had kept of the girl and had seen that Amber lost any chance of winning the kid over with her bitch fits about Blind Mag; the look on Shilo's face the second she spotted Mag made it obvious that she was practically getting wet in her panties over any attention at all from their pet singer. And Luigi had seen for himself that Shilo reacted with the same amount of disgust any _sane_ person would give Pavi; Luigi had been the one who'd needed to pull her safely away from the freak, after all.

And it had been in that moment, when he'd had his arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders, that he'd realized that all the batshit insanity that had gone on that day had been enough to distract her from the one tiny little thing he'd done that might get him on her shit list as well. She'd seen Nathan go down, but hadn't noticed just _who_ had shoved the knife in his back; she was the type of girl who would never have let Luigi lay a hand on her after stabbing her beloved daddy otherwise, no matter how pissed off she'd been with him. He sure as hell wouldn't have been the one she'd turned to when she was begging someone to explain things to her if she'd noticed that Nathan's blood was still wet on his hands.

And that was the _only_ thing he needed to know.


	2. Chapter One

It took him too damned long to find her, because he'd been wasting his time searching _sane_ places for a seventeen-year-old who'd just inherited enough money to _almost_ be considered higher than peasant class to be. Her own damned house, decent hotels, popular vacations spots abroad in case she just wanted to get away; he even kept an eye on who went through every fucking half-decent surGEN in the city so he'd catch her if she went in to get sliced and diced. That had lead to him learning way the hell too much about Amber's most recent modifications in the process, idiots who thought he was poking around because he gave a shit about her addiction practically coming out of the woodwork to give him all the details. As if he was too fucking blind to see her face changing for himself.

Who the fuck would have expected that the little idiot would turn up sleeping in dumpsters, cuddled up against the same graverobber that Luigi knew for a _fact_ his sister used to have her surGENs tighten her disease-ridden cunt up for whenever she decided that _paying_ for her black-market zydrate was just too fucking _banal_, back before she took over the company and could get the real drug freely.

When the GenCop who'd found her passed Luigi the pictures of her cozy new sleeping arrangements he'd just about given up on her then and there. Anyone _stupid_ enough to let a cock that had been shoved into his sister anywhere near them was too fucking dumb to live, as far as he was concerned. The only reason he didn't drop his old plan that second and start working on a new one was that he'd put too much time into hunting her down not to at least keep an eye on her for a couple of weeks and see if there was anything worth working with there.

And what he found was... hilarious. It quickly became obvious that her nighttime cuddling sessions were completely innocent--Luigi decided that the fucking graverobber probably didn't even know what the hell to do with a piece of ass if it didn't throw itself at him like a slut the way Amber did--and the truth was both a thousand times funnier and less disgusting. Who would ever have imagined Nathan Wallace's precious little daughter, whom he'd tried to keep locked up safe in her room for her whole damned life, learning how to drain corpses of their glow from some man-whore of a dealer? It made Luigi wish to god that his pop was still alive just so he could rub his face in what had become of his little protegee. The sheer _spite_ of that desire, after months of wishing to god that his pop was still alive just because _he missed his daddy_ like some sniveling little baby, made him feel more like himself than he'd been since that night at the opera.

She wasn't on zydrate herself, again managing to dodge doing something stupid enough for him to stop paying attention to her. In fact, she seemed just as disgusted by the mindless bastards who came seeking her wares as Luigi himself was. She was polite enough to their faces, a blandly pleasant smile plastered so neatly across her face that Luigi might have thought his father had actually taught her a thing or two about doing business while grooming her as his heir if it weren't for the fact that she didn't even try acting interested, or caring, or any of the other pathetic fucking pleasantries that needed to be faked when you had your business face on. She didn't bother hiding her real feelings for longer than it took to turn away from the pathetic Z-zombie of the moment, showing her disgust in the twist of her lips or the wrinkling of her nose the second she thought nobody was watching who wasn't too out of it to be paying attention.

She sure as hell didn't play with the addicts the way her filthy fucking mentor did. In fact, he watched her get better at skittering away from any of them that tried to put their hands on her by the day, and the more obviously they whored themselves out for their fixes the more distance she tried to keep from them. She sent them over to the graverobber to get their injections, or let them do it themselves, but she never touched them herself. Not a display of good goddamned business sense, handing over one of the Z-guns that could only be gotten by stealing from GeneCo, but it didn't matter all that much when anyone hunting down black market Zydrate would be too fucking desperate to shoot up as soon as possible to think of just running off with the gun.

It was only after Luigi was positive that he wouldn't end up with another Amber fucking Sweet on his hands with her that he decided to drop in for a little chat.

He waited until one of the rare times when her nanny was gone, off fucking a junkie or chasing down corpses somewhere that he'd decided was too dangerous for his little apprentice, before making his way to her trash heap. He kept to the shadows until he was sure that he had his most charming smile fixed firmly in place, the one that he only bothered with when there was some reason that he needed to avoid making the fucking peasants scream 'Murderer!' or 'Monster!' or 'Run away, he'd got a knife!' It was only when he was sure that he'd be able to hold the expression, keeping his temper as steady and calm as it could ever possibly get, that he stepped out of the alley he was lurking in and called out to her.

She didn't recognize him at first, his face shadowed by fedora he wore pulled low (a fucking _fabulous_ look on him; Sinatra could eat his heart out) to keep any goddamned peons from noticing who he was and possibly passing the word on to Amber or Pavi. Luigi counted it to her credit that as soon as he got close enough for her to make out his face she was immediately wary and on guard, shifting until there was street behind her instead of a wall, but she lost points for being so obvious about it. If he'd _wanted_ to he would already have had his knife in her chest the second he'd seen she was skittish, before she even had a chance to decide to run. Though she might not be entirely to blame; the last time he'd seen her she'd had piles of hair to hide behind when she needed to mask her expression, but there was nothing left of it but a half-inch of fuzz, leaving her face wide open. She might not have gotten used to it yet.

But that would still be just a fucking excuse. If she wanted to hack off her hair she should have been ready to deal with that.

"Shilo Wallace, so it _is_ you!" he said, smiling, jovial, for all the world like he'd just happened to be passing through her crapsack slum and _boy_ wasn't it a pleasant surprise to see her, no, he didn't know she'd be there, no need to even think that.

"I'm not--" she started, but her voice cracked with fear and she needed to swallow it down before she could continue, her eyes darting around like she was searching for GenCops in every shadow. He hoped that she didn't notice the way his smile widened just a tick at her alarm. "I don't want anything to do with GeneCo, so if you're here because Amber's worried I'll try stealing it, you can tell her I... I wouldn't be living in the trash if I was planning on trying to make people think I'd be a good company president."

His smile became a little harder to keep in place at her assumption that he'd be there for his bitch of a sister, but he was able to hold it. "Of course you don't. Nobody expected you too after everything Pop did to you," he said, with the perfect notes of understanding and concern in his voice. If things had gone according to plan he would have began working on gaining her trust then, but instead she seemed to feel like his agreeing that she wasn't a threat was all that she needed from him. She nodded at him like they'd reached some kind of agreement, then turned tail and fled.

He'd assumed that he'd be able to catch her easily if he needed to, sickly thing that she'd been after seventeen years of chugging down poisons, but she was gone in moments, vanishing into the crowd of addicts who always swarmed her street. Not that he'd have been able to chase anyway, when frightening her by hunting her down could make his work on her a hell of a lot harder.

Knowing that didn't make him any less pissed off that'd she'd gotten away when he'd hardly had a minute to talk to her.

"Fucking _hell_," he growled, searching for a way to vent his anger as he whirled back towards the alley he'd arrived through. And luckily the one he spotted was already hidden by the wall, where Shilo wouldn't be able to spot it if she was lurking in the crowd watching to see his next move.

He grabbed the junkie slut by her hair as he walked past her, not even breaking his stride as he dragged her further away from Shilo's dumpster; if he was going to play Mister Nice Guy for the brat it'd be better not to leave any messes near her 'home'. He could tell that the bitch he'd grabbed was already out of her mind on Z--she didn't scream or struggle as he dragged her along, her bloodstream flowing with too much glow for the pain to even make an impression--which was good for keeping a low profile but a fucking disappointment in other ways.

The fact that she was in trouble was only just finally starting to force itself into her brain when he decided that they'd gone far enough, but she didn't have enough time to do more than feebly squirm before he slid a knife from his sleeve and drove it into her chest. He wanted blood and he got it, aiming to tear through veins and arteries as the woman gasped and twitched. The fucking idiot couldn't even pull together enough sense to realize that screaming for help might just be a good idea, even if her nerves were too dead to let her know that she should be in agony.

Not that it would have done her any good. He was a _Largo_; nobody was going to stop him from doing whatever the fuck he wanted.

His mind was clear by the time the body finished its twitching and he left it to be swept up with the rest of the human waste. He might not have had much time to work on the girl, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It meant that there also hadn't been enough time for his temper to slip even the slightest bit. When she looked back on meeting him that day she would remember him as friendly and composed, and should feel silly for fleeing him for no reason. He'd leave her to reflect on that for a few days.

In the meantime, he needed a clean shirt.


	3. Chapter Two

She was angry the next time he approached her, pissed off at some asshole hassling her because she was out of zydrate. He found her in the graveyard, jamming the needle of her syringe into the skulls of corpses with far more force than necessary, her face twisted into a scowl. It was a much better look for her than the timid confusion she'd shown through most of the previous times he'd seen her.

"That needle's going to break soon if you don't go easier on it," he told her. It wasn't the greeting he'd planned on, but damn if he didn't hate seeing a good sharp instrument ruined.

She jumped at the sound of his voice, scrambling around to face him. Her angry expression wavered for a minute when she saw him, but she managed to hold onto it. It looked even better seen head-on, and Luigi added a few underlines to the mental note he'd already made to keep Pavi the hell away from her; her face had already drawn the freak's interest when she was just being mousy, and if she started showing spirit he'd only want it more.

"You _again_?" she asked, trying to sound bold though there was a quaver in her voice that she couldn't quite hide. "What, does Amber send you to buy her zydrate now because she's too busy to come on her own?"

Luigi was going to get really fucking sick of it fast if she kept assuming he was playing Amber's gofer all the goddamned time. "_One_ thing we've gotta get clear if we're going to keep running into each other like this," he said, doing his best not to let much annoyance show. "I don't play errand boy for my sister."

"Or tell her who you just happened to meet?"

"What I do after business hours is none of her business."

"And... and, what? You're just spending your free time in the graveyard for _fun_?"

"One of my bodyguards was buried near here today," he said smoothly, and, like all the best lies, truthfully, allowing her to draw her own conclusions. As he expected, after a moment her face softened a little, undoubtedly imagining the man dying by heroically protecting Luigi in the course of his duty, and that Luigi was showing a hidden softer side by sneaking down to visit his grave and honor his sacrifice. And, hell, if she bothered grabbing a newspaper to do some fact checking it would even corroborate that version of the bastard's death; letting it slip that Luigi had stabbed him a dozen times for splashing tea on his shoes would have been bad publicity.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Um, if you want to show me which grave is his, I could make sure to leave it alone."

It was possible that he should have bothered finding out which grave they'd stuffed the guy in before using him as an excuse, but it was a simple matter to wave it off with a snort. "We're not stupid enough not to realize that anyone buried down here's going to be dug up again within a week, no matter how many laws we make. Might as well let _you_ have as much of a chance at him as anyone else." He stepped closer to her, keeping a sharp eye on her reaction as he approached. She watched him just as closely, her muscles tensed like she was ready to flee again if needed, but a little of the tension drained back out when he stopped at a gravestone that looked sturdy enough to lean against. Not too bright of her to relax at all, but just what he was hoping to see. "You realize that telling a _Largo_ that you're a graverobber isn't the brainiest move to make, don't you?"

She looked at him like she had no idea whether he was being serious or not. "You're the one who just gave me advice on doing it. It would have been a little late to try denying it when you found me with a needle in someone's skull."

"You'd better be ready to _try_ if anyone _else_ catches you out here. Not everyone will be _nice_ enough to turn a blind eye to a felon."

"So why are _you?_" she asked, the anger she'd been displaying when he first approached her flaring up again as she tossed the body she'd been draining back into its coffin. "You don't know me, you've got no reason to help me, and I don't have anything _left_ for you people to try to take from me."

"_Don't_ group me together with Amber and fucking Pavi!" he snapped, the insult of her 'you people' tossing them all together too great for him to entirely keep his temper steady. But when she flinched he managed to pull it together again. "Maybe I'm just curious about how the hell Nathan Wallace's daughter wound up living on the streets and robbing graves. I _know_ Pops paid him enough to give you a decent inheritance."

"I'm not touching that blood money," she all but spat, a shudder shaking her body so strongly that Luigi could see it from where he stood. He was tempted to point out that being a drug dealing graverobber didn't give her a fucking moral high ground to stand on if she felt like getting preachy about killing, but it would probably just make her bitch more. He watched her as she struggled to get the coffin's lid neatly back into place, then scrambled back out of the hole to stare at him consideringly. After a second her expression firmed, and she grabbed a shovel off the ground and thrust it out at him. "Okay, if you want to know so much, you can help me work while I tell you."

His eyes narrowed as he looked at the shovel. "'Help you work,'" he repeated, keeping his tone perfectly flat. She wanted Luigi fucking Largo to dig in the ground like some filthy commoner?

"I can't shovel as quickly if I'm having a conversation, and I need to get through at least a few more graves before I'm done for the night," she explained, keeping her own eyes steadily on his face. "It's your choice, Mr. Largo. If you really want to know why I'm doing this, you'll help me fill in this grave. If you don't, you can just _leave me alone_ and not get mud on your suit."

He tore the shovel out of her hand and quickly transferred his scowl to the pile of dirt she wanted him to move before she could see it. It would be so _fucking_ easy to just swing it around and smash her skull open, to leave her in the pool of her own brains and blood for her disgusting companion to find for _daring_ to ask this for him, but god-fucking-damn it if she wasn't still the easiest path he'd been able to find back to his rightful place in the company and if getting her to _want_ to open up to him wasn't an important step in winning her over.

He doubted that he'd ever completely forgive his father for putting him into a situation where there was someone from outside of the family who he couldn't just gut when they pissed him off.

"Well?" he snapped over his shoulder at her when he'd scooped up his first few shovelfuls of dirt and thrown them into the hole. The last time he'd dug in the ground he'd been nine-years-old, and he'd buried Pavi in his sandbox up to his neck and left him there in the hopes that nobody would find him. The freak's entire face had wound up badly sunburned, and he'd thrown a bigger fit about that than about having been abandoned in the first place.

Now he tried to imagine that it was Pavi he was burying again, or Amber, or, best choice of all, both of them crammed into one shallow grave. The beautiful mental pictures that thought gave him made the labor almost worth it.

"Sorry," Shilo finally said quietly, picking up another shovel--the graverobber's, he figured--and joining him to do her half of the work. "I... I just thought I was going to make you go away. I never thought you'd actually _do_ this."

"Looks like I'm just full of surprises today," he said, experimenting to see how much he could slow down before she'd start complaining that he wasn't doing his share of the work. It was really goddamned embarrassing that he was already starting to get tired from the digging while she, the little girl who'd spent seventeen years locked in a bedroom with her blood flowing with poison, had emptied the hole out to begin with and still looked fresh under all the dirt. "Why the hell are you wasting energy putting this corpse back in the ground instead of moving onto the next one?"

Luigi had actually thought he was just asking a harmless simple question--if he was going to be dragged around on shoveling duty for long he wanted to know why she expected him to do twice as much work as necessary when most of the robbers that swarmed the cemetery just left bodies lying around behind them--so he wasn't expecting it when her face suddenly screwed up like she was fighting down the urge to cry. She closed her eyes tightly, drew a deep breath, and seemed more steady when she opened them again, but there was still a quaver in her voice when she said, "Look, I _know_ I'm doing a really horrible thing here, okay? But I can at least keep enough basic human decency to make sure these poor people go back to resting in peace once I'm done."

It was hard for Luigi to hold off a snort that might send her down into new depths of self-righteousness. 'Basic human decency'? He could tell her whole fucking stories about what _that_ would get her. You actually try treating someone nicely and it might be easier to get something out of them, but nine times out of ten it wasn't long before they started thinking that they could walk all over him; being asked to dig a hole by someone who didn't expect him to actually do it wasn't nearly as annoying as people who seriously thought he'd empty out his wallet for them if they spun him a good enough sob story. And it wasn't like the newspapers would ever put out the story that 'today Luigi Largo tried out being a 'decent' guy, so if niceness is what you're looking for when you're doing business look him up and give him one more business deal to shove in the face of everyone that needs evidence that he's the most worthy heir' to make it worth it.

Terrifying the hell out of everyone might not win him any hearts, but at least they knew better than to try any of that shit with him if they didn't want to learn what their innards looked like. Besides, it was a hell of a lot more _fun_ to just cut down any peasant who pissed him off and not care about being diplomatic.

"The only thing I know really well is entomology, but it's not like I can make a career out of that when I don't even have a diploma," she said suddenly, keeping her eyes on her work. "And Graverobber's the only friend I have. I don't _know_ anybody else who could help me stay on my feet without using dad's money or going back to living in that prison."

She stabbed her shovel into the ground and looked at him with big sad eyes. "So you can stop now. That's the whole story; I'm doing this because I don't have any other choice."


	4. Chapter Three

He'd thought things were going well, after two meetings and not a drop of Shilo's blood being spilt even when she'd _really_ deserved it the last time. So he was a little surprised by her look of complete exasperation the next time she saw him.

"Are you a Z-addict too? Is _that_ what this is about? Do you keep coming out here looking for someone who won't know you to buy from, and running into me instead?" Faster than he would have thought she could move she had her zydrate gun unstrapped from her leg and pressed against his neck, the needle of it pricking at his skin. Maybe he'd been _too_ nice to her in their past meetings; this time she met his eyes without nearly enough fear. "If that's it, you should just tell me; if I cared enough to go to the papers I'd have already let them know the rumors are right about your sister."

"Get that shit the _fuck_ away from me!" Luigi snarled, hardly even listening to her. He grabbed her wrist and yanked her hand away from him almost hard enough to dislocate her arm before her finger had any chance to twitch on the trigger. "Didn't that fucking graverobber teach you not to shove that thing into someone's neck?"

"Let go! That _hurts_, Luigi," she said, struggling to pull her arm out of his grip, and _there_ was the fear that had been missing in her eyes.

It was tempting to squeeze just a little more tightly, twist just a little further back, give her a lesson that she wouldn't forget about why she shouldn't take his goodwill for granted. But then she would run, and never let him get close enough to talk with her again. Slowly, one finger at a time, he forced himself to release her.

She yanked her hand to her chest at once, and backed off a few feet to regard him warily. "I don't give people the injections, so I never let him teach me anything about them," she admitted after a minute.

"Well, aren't I just a fucking _lucky_ bastard, that you decided to make an exception," he said, and she flinched back another step at the way he glared.

"You could take it as a compliment," she said in a conciliatory tone. "You're not too... too _gross_ to touch, like all of them," her eyes darted sideways, to down the road where her customers, the filth of the earth, slumped on the street in drug hazes, or piled around an oil can fire for warmth, or searched for anyone who hadn't completely blown their own cash on glow who might trade a few chips for a quick fuck and a lifetime dealing with STDs. "And I didn't plan on pulling the trigger, so whatever you were worried about wouldn't have happened."

"Well whoop-de-fucking-doo. Now listen up, and I'll tell you why you _don't_ fuck around with that garbage with me. Better count yourself lucky; you won't find many dealers who've gotten a lesson from somebody who knows what the hell they're talking about and actually read the medical research to back it up." He reached out to snag the gun out of her hand, tossing it back to her after he'd snapped the vial of zydrate out of it. "This shit usually just sits around in your brain," he said, tapping the vial against his temple as illustration. "You'd _better_ know that by now, you drain it often enough. You want to guess what happens to someone when they've suddenly got twice as much zydrate as normal in their head because some idiot jammed it into an artery that takes it straight there instead of giving it a chance to spread out? One little change of plan, and tomorrow you'd have started finding out how much _worse_ the world would get when fucking Pavi and Amber got to do whatever the hell they wanted because you ruined the only working brain left in the Largo family!"

"Okay, I get it! I'm sorry; it's not like I purposely picked your neck to freak you out, the way you dress just doesn't offer many spots with bare skin to pick from. You don't need to get so angry about something that didn't happen." She held out her hand until he passed back her zydrate vial, which she slid into place under one of the straps wrapped around her thigh. "You still haven't told me why you're here. It would be really neat if you tried telling the truth this time; I was willing to buy that you just happened to be in the same place as me twice, but three times _stops_ being a coincidence."

Luigi forced himself to calm down, his face to smooth out, before feeding her another lie built out of the truth. "Fine, fine. I knew both of your parents, you know."

Shilo groaned and pressed her hands to her eyes. "_Please_ tell me you haven't decided that the best way to honor your father's memory is to finish up his work of _ruining my life_ to punish them."

Luigi snorted. "Are you kidding me? Your mom used to come into my room at night boo-hoo-hooing because she hated being with Pop so much. I was _glad_ when she ran off with Nathan and I didn't need to put up with that shit anymore. I don't know why she even agreed to marry Pop to begin with." He had his suspicions though, mostly involving Mag's sight. He didn't know for sure whether or not it was true, but he liked to believe it was; it was the type of beautiful fucking irony you didn't usually see in real life, if she'd gotten herself killed as a result of a plot to get Mag the eyes that trapped her in a situation she'd ended up hating so much. "As for your old man, you _really_ think any of _us_ were in on Dad's plan to toss out _our_ inheritance to get back at him? We always just thought he was a family friend, and Pop's favorite employee, even after Marnie."

Favorite punching bag was still a _type_ of favorite anyway, and they _had_ always thought that their father was content just making sure old Weepy Wallace never let go of his guilt for second as his revenge.

"So now your story is that you're hanging around because you _liked my parents_ so much? It sure didn't seem like you were such good friends when I was the only one trying to help my dad at the opera."

"_You_ wouldn't have been on _my_ pop's side either, if yours had been the one to take the advantage out there, so don't you even _try_ getting self-righteous about it." He pulled back out his charming smile, the one he hadn't used since their first conversation, and flashed it at her. "Don't start thinking I'm going to drag you in off the streets, but I can waste an hour now and then making sure you haven't died in an alley yet for them."

She looked at him silently for a moment, and he did his best to radiate earnestness as she judged the bullshit he'd fed her. Finally she said, "Has anybody ever told you that you have Rotti's smile?"

For just a moment a touch of honesty entered his expression. If there was one person Luigi'd known in his life whom he'd given more than two shits about it was his father, no matter how pissed off his final act had left him. One person that he could be proud to be compared to. "Haven't heard that one before."

"Well, it's true. You look just like he did when he was trying to trick me into thinking he was my friend." She turned from him and began walking away. Just as he was fantasizing about how good it would feel to plunge one of his knives into the wide clear target of her back she paused and, without turning back around, added, "If you're not going to stop bothering me, maybe you should just stop trying to convince me you're such a nice guy instead. You're a lot more sincere when you're swearing at me every other word."


	5. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anybody who's a fan of the movie but never checked out the official online material and is looking at Pavi's dialog thinking "Shouldn't that be signora?": not with Pavi it shouldn't.

It took him too damned long to start wondering why it had taken so many weeks to first find her. The GenCops were pathetically bad at ever catching the damned graverobber, but they could usually at least keep track of his movements from one step behind. Even before he'd set them to looking for her, they should have reported in that he was suddenly bringing an apprentice to the graveyard, and once Luigi had sent out pictures of her they should have been able to recognize her for who she was even with her missing hair throwing off her appearance.

What he found when he investigated their failure was proof that he'd been absolutely right in his suspicions about how certain people would react to Rotti's almost-heir. Amber, brainless bimbo that she was, had seen restaffing the branches of GeneCo with people loyal to her as too much effort when they already had enough workers, and Luigi sure as hell hadn't put much effort into convincing her otherwise when it would hopefully be one more thing in his favor when the day came to make his move.

On days when the front pages of all the tabloids were dedicated to trying to convince the world that his whole family was made up of monsters (an insult that didn't especially bother Luigi; better a monster than a '_creature_') a person could almost forget how fucking much most of the peasants still loved his father. Terror of the Repo Man and rumors about a few dirty deeds weren't nearly enough to overwhelm the well-deserved adoration they'd heaped on him for providing a solution to the plague of organ failures. And there weren't many people who felt that adoration more then the ones who looked at every branch of law enforcement and the military available, and decided that the one they wanted to fight under was GeneCo.

In fact, that loyalty had been one of Rotti's unspoken requirements when he was choosing new members of the GenCops; he'd had no desire to arm any bastard who just wanted to play with cutting-edge weapons or get paid to fight. It would make it too easy for someone to turn them against him if they could provide a big enough bribe. That carefully searched out loyalty lasted even once he was in the grave; the girl might never have officially been named his successor, but after Luigi's dad had publicly denounced his own children the fuckers put the person he'd come closest to declaring his heir before the orders of his own flesh and blood. Just as Luigi had thought some people would, although he'd misjudged just how many.

He was _definitely_ going to need to make sure she ended up dead if he couldn't win her over. Couldn't have them know he was the one who caused it though; maybe he'd be able to slip the idea to Amber or Pavi and have them face all of the fallout.

The next time he decided to allow her into his presence, he figured he'd test the limits of that loyalty instead of bothering to make the effort of driving out to see her. "Whoever catches Shilo Wallace the next time she sneaks into the graveyard and brings her to me gets their next paycheck doubled," he'd announced through a comm transmission to every GenCop in the city, and then after a second's thought had added, "and keep your fucking mouths shut about it around Amber and Pavi, unless you want to lose your fucking tongues. The kid too, when you're dragging her in."

It was just a matter of waiting then... and of keeping an eye on who suddenly showed an abnormal interest in working overtime in an attempt to bump up the amount of cash in their checks.

She must have started keeping a decent drug stockpile after the day he'd talked to her in the cemetery, because it was well over a week before one of the grunts finally showed up and told him that she was in custody. "And, uh... you might want to know, Mr. Largo, sir, that some of the other officers tried to keep me bringing her in." He rubbed a cut on his cheek, it and a bruise above his temple his only visible injuries though his uniform was enough of a mess to make it likely there were more bruises beneath it.

He didn't even notice Luigi pulling out a knife until he'd lashed out to slash open his throat. "I'll make sure to look into that!" he let the cop know as he wiped the blood off his blade, then he slipped it up his sleeve and left and locked the room. Most people in GeneCo wouldn't be stupid enough to help someone they saw with knife wound and risk having him come after them next, but he wanted to be _sure_ the bastard bled out before anyone found him. If the fucker was willing to sell her out to _him_ so easily he'd pass the information on to Pavi or Amber just as quick, and probably let them know Luigi had been after her first when he did it. It was almost a shame, he'd been smart enough to wait until Luigi was alone to let him know she'd been caught _and_ to make sure to hide her in a private holding room where nobody else would know she was around--a detail Luigi himself had forgotten to put in his orders--but Luigi made it a point _never_ to regret his kills.

He'd need to take care of the others who'd seemed likely to go after her soon. He usually preferred to off the people he needed killed himself, but this time he thought it might be fun to let their names 'accidentally' slip to the other GenCops and then sit back and watch the hunt begin.

He stopped for a moment outside of the room she was being held in to work himself up to a proper level of anger before greeting her. It was a novel feeling; usually when he was putting on an act for the peasants it was all about faking a smile and not letting them see how damned much wasting his time on them pissed him off. Just being at a baseline level of annoyed when he needed to present 'what the hell do you think you were doing, you idiot?'-level rage wasn't generally a problem he needed to take care of, but it was one easily fixed just by thinking for two seconds about how GeneCo's upper tiers were currently ordered.

"I can't fucking _believe_ you let yourself get caught!" he shouted as he slammed open the door.

From the way she flinched and wrapped her arms around herself he could tell that she hadn't been expecting that type of entrance from whoever came to interrogate her. "It's not like I was _planning_ on it," she said sullenly when she was done being surprised. "They must have changed their patrol schedule since the last time I was there; _nobody_ should have been in the area for another twenty minutes. And it's not like I could do something against a guy with a gun."

Luigi made a mental note to ream the GenCops out for setting patrol schedules obvious enough for the gutter trash she was getting all her information from to memorize it as he readied himself for his last big attempt to win her over. If she didn't show at least a _hint_ that she was starting to trust him by the time she left the building he was going to start thinking up a new plan, because winning her over would obviously take way the hell too much time if it ever happened at all. "Do you realize how fucking lucky you are that I was the first person they found to report to?" he asked, glaring at her. "Amber knows damned well how many people want to see her booted from the position she's grabbed. How the fuck do you think the selfish little cunt is going to react if she finds out the heir Pop wanted has been lurking around on GeneCo property, even if it _is_ just the fucking graveyard? And that would still be better that what you'd get if fucking _Pavi_ found out that you were trapped in a room that locks from the outside, but whatever the hell he did you'd have to just be glad that now that he's become Amber's lapdog he wouldn't maim you too much before dragging you to her!"

Her eyes had grown wide and she'd begun to worry her bottom lip with her teeth as he spoke. "You make it sound like your brother and sister are monsters."

Luigi snorted. "Pop got one or two things right his last night. Those two _things_."

"I think that he didn't have many nice things to say about you either," she said, her eyes dodging away from him to stare off at the corner of the room when she said it.

"And he tried to say you were a fucking killer."

After a long stretched-out moment of silence she gave a small nod and Luigi needed to hide the surge of triumph seeing it gave him. "Yeah. He got a lot of things wrong that night."

He pressed his hand between her shoulder blades, watching the way she flinched but didn't pull away, and pushed her towards the door. "Time to get you the hell out of here before word spreads."

Getting her out _should_ have been the easy part. It wasn't that much distance to a side door that he could shove her out without much worry about anyone important seeing her leave, and none of the nobodies they met on the way there would spread rumors about the company Luigi Largo chose to keep. Not that it kept him from grabbing her whenever he saw someone coming and pulling her into a position where his body hid her identity from whoever it was; making her _think_ that it was important she stay hidden, and that he was doing his best to make sure that she was, was an easy way to earn more brownie points.

It went perfectly well right up until he spotted a shadow on the wall ahead of them warning of someone coming around the corner. Someone who's shadow Luigi had, luckily, learned to recognize years before (primarily by the lumpy shape the Genterns constantly hanging off of him caused) so he could dodge into a room when the little freak was coming. Unfortunately there were no convenient rooms he could reach in that stretch of the hall before Pavi came around the corner, so he did the next best thing.

He pulled Shilo against him until her head was pressed against his shoulder. "_Don't_ pull far enough away for Pavi to see your face," he hissed at her when she tried to yank straight back away in her surprise. For once he didn't need to rely on any acting skills at all to get the urgency in his voice; all the time he'd put into this plan would be _wasted_ if his brother got a good look at her. She seemed to realize just how serious he was being because she went still as he pulled one side of the large overcoat he was wearing across her, holding it in place with his arm across her back and effectively hiding her body. Faces were Pavi's main interest, but Luigi wouldn't past him to memorize bodies too, just so he'd be able to recognize any girls who got away from him unmutilated from any angle.

Besides, she dressed like a slum prostitute, and he didn't want Pavi thinking he was spending time with one of _those_ either.

"What the hell are you doing down here, Brother?" he asked as soon as Pavi turned the corner, trying to take the advantage in the conversation by getting the first word in.

"Ah, it is so tragic!" Pavi said, smiling as blandly as he could with his horror show of a face. "The family of a singora who kept the Pavi company last week came to tell him that she disappeared after her time here! Of course the Pavi offered to have our GenCops search right away."

Luigi rolled his eyes. "They're going to think to try the fucking morgue sooner or later," he said, and felt Shilo stiffen against her. It had taken her long enough to realize that he wasn't just fucking around when he warned her about Pavi.

"The Pavi will be sure to send a bouquet if that happens. Gladiolus, as lovely as she was!" Otherwise known as the Paviche Special, Luigi knew, to the florist who would arrange them. It was the same fucking thing Pavi always sent to any families brave enough to approach him about their daughters going 'missing'. Then the moment Luigi had known was coming arrived, as Pavi turned his attention to Shilo. "But I see that now my brother is the one with a singora. Come, let the Pavi see you, m'bella."

"Back the _fuck_ off, Pavi," Luigi growled at him, pulling his coat across her a little more fully. It was a little tempting to close the other side over her as well and hide her completely, even though his coat really wasn't large enough to close around a second person comfortably, but that would just look fucking stupid and make Pavi even _more_ curious about her.

"You must be a lovely bella indeed, if Luigi hides you so jealously!" Pavi said, laughing his stupid fucking titter and stepping behind Luigi to try getting a glimpse of her over his shoulder. At least she was clever enough to duck her head a little more and press it more closely against Luigi's shoulder. "Ah, don't be so shy, singora! The Pavi only wishes to have a look."

"Pavi, I swear if you don't get the hell away _now_..." he let the sentence trail off menacingly, though there wasn't actually all that much he could do at that moment without giving Pavi exactly what he wanted by revealing her. Didn't matter; Pavi should know him well enough to realize that Luigi _could_ wait patiently to take revenge when it came to people he couldn't just kill outright.

Of course, Pavi was also way the fuck too persistent when he was chasing pussy. "Wouldn't you rather come with the Pavi, bella?" he cooed at her, though he backed up enough to no longer be hovering over them. "You'll find more pleasure from Pavi's cazzo than from being pierced by Luigi's little knife, this is a promise."

Luigi was just starting to think that lunging at Pavi would be _worth_ the mess it would make of his plans when Shilo suddenly startled him so much that he almost choked.

Her body, which she'd been holding so stiffly that it hadn't moved a centimeter from where he'd first positioned her, suddenly went soft against him, closing the hair's-breadth she'd kept between them everywhere but where her forehead pressed against him and leaving her pressed tightly against him from his shoulder to his thigh. She turned her head upwards and tilted it to the side, her lips grazing the cloth of his shirt the entire way due to the necessity of keeping her face close enough to use his body as a mask, until it was buried in his neck. One hand slid up his side until she could drape her arm over his shoulder and curl her fingers into the fabric of the back of his coat.

"It's _so_ flattering to have caught the interest of _both_ Largo brothers," she said, her mouth moving against his skin. Her tone was clearly trying to be a sultry purr, but it was just as clear to anyone who _wasn't_ a teenaged virgin how much of an inexperienced impression it was. "But it would be _too_ rude for me to leave Luigi now. I'm sorry, Mr. Pavi."

"So disappointing, m'bella. If you change your mind, ask any Gentern how to find the Pavi's room; they all know the way well." The two he had with him tittered and cooed like the fucking animals flocking to his wealth that they were, making Luigi roll his eyes again.

It was probably even completely true, which was the main reason why Luigi would take a vow of chastity before he ever got desperate enough to fuck a Gentern no matter _how_ sexy they modified themselves to be. He would _never_ stick his cock in a hole Pavi had already gotten to.

Little whore-loathing Shilo was apparently just as disgusted at Pavi for the implication that she'd spread her legs for someone who so blithely admitted that he'd fucked an entire company department's worth of women as Luigi was; she was close enough that he could feel her hand curling into a tight fist beside his hip. But she kept her voice steady as she replied, "I'll remember."

The Genterns finally decided to make themselves useful then. "Oh, _Pavi_," one of them all but moaned, "are you done with her yet?"

"We'll make you forget all about that little girl," the other said in the exact same tone. "You're making us wait so long, _Pavi_."

"Ah, forgive me, singoras! The Pavi would never mean to leave a beautiful woman yearning!" He wrapped one arm around each of them, and gave Shilo one last look, "We will see each other again later, bella? If you are still around to see."

Luigi waited to release her until Pavi had gone far enough that he could no longer hear him and the Genterns chattering. The second his arm was no longer holding her in place she jerked away and didn't stop stumbling backwards until there was a good yard separating them. She began rubbing at her arms like they felt dirty from holding him, an insult only slightly dulled by how flamingly red he could now see her face was.

"Sorry," she muttered, as if he were really going to get upset about a hot girl pressing herself up against him, even if his tastes didn't usually run to jailbait. His rage wasn't _that_ irrational. "I do the same act with Graverobber when someone starts hanging around who won't take no for an answer. It usually works, so I thought I'd see if it would help... even if Pavi doesn't have as much reason to avoid making you angry as the addicts do with him."

"Now that the fucker's gone we're gonna need a change of plans. Come on," Luigi told her and turned to backtrack to the last hallway they'd passed. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and flipped it open as he walked, not bothering to look back to see if she was following. He was Luigi Largo; when he told someone to heel, they damned well did it.

He dialed GeneCo's main security office. "South hallway of the GenCops department, heading for the residential area. See the girl I'm with?" he asked as soon as someone picked up, then plowed right along without waiting for an answer; even if whoever he was talking to wasn't already sitting in front of the feed from the security cameras, they'd be scrambling for them as soon as they heard him talking. "Erase _every_ second of footage you have of her here, and keep it up until she leaves. And _don't_ fucking forget that it will take me two seconds to find out who was on duty tonight if you fail."

He no longer tried keeping her hidden; let everyone they passed tell Pavi that, yes, Luigi _did_ have a girl with him when he went to his room that night if he asked. It would be a bitch if they ran into Amber on the way, but, as long as Shilo kept her mouth shut, not the disaster it would be with Pavi. Unlike Pavi, whose entire brain was dedicated to his disgusting obsession with women's faces, Amber only bothered to remember someone's voice until after she'd seen them four or five times with the same features. She just couldn't get it through her fucking head that there were people in the world who _didn't_ change their appearance more often than their clothes.

"Pavi is a nosy fucking pervert," he explained to her as they walked. "Once you're out of here you'll be fine; he's got the brain of a goddamned magpie, so even if he tries hunting you down he'll get distracted by something shiny and forget all about you two seconds after he steps out the door. GeneCo he's used to, so he _can_ stay focused long enough to get down to the monitoring room if he'd curious enough, which he _will_ be after that fucking masquerade, but they'll put my orders first, so it'll be fine." They reached his door and he unlocked and opened it for her. "Get in."

She took two steps into the room, then immediately backed out again. "I-I thought you understood!" she said, her eyes far more panicked-looking than he thought the situation deserved. "I didn't mean to be a tease or anything, and I really appreciate what you're doing for me, but I'm _not_ going to just--"

He cut her off by shoving her into the room and quickly stepping in and closing and bolting the door before she had a chance to trying darting out again. When he turned back away from the door she was staring at the bed with an expression of outright horror on her face. Even if he couldn't afford to do anything more, he _really_ wanted to smack her upside the head hard enough to replace that look with a grimace of pain, but he forced himself to just throw himself into his desk chair with enough force to almost topple it backwards. "_Stop_ looking like you think I'm going to fucking _rape_ you," he snarled, glaring at her. After everything he'd fucking done for her, never once giving into the temptation to hurt her no matter _how_ much she'd practically goaded him towards it at times, she went and put him on the same level as _Pavi_. "If I was looking for a fuck, I could snap my goddamned fingers and be _swimming_ in willing cunt. I don't need to force myself on a scared little girl."

God, if _anything_ his bedroom was the safest fucking place in the entire building. Nobody else was allowed in without his permission--which meant Amber and Pavi never got to so much as stand on the threshold--and Luigi wouldn't murder where he slept anymore than he'd shit where he ate.

She at least had the decency to look contrite as she relaxed enough to sit down on his couch. "I'm sorry. I'm just... really unused to this, still."

"Unused to _what_, being stuck in a room with a guy who _won't_ try to rape you? Because if it's that fucking uncommon, maybe you should try living in a place that isn't a fucking slum."

"No, being stuck in a room with a guy who's not my dad. Or any person who's not him. Or any room that's not my old bedroom, or at least in my house." She rested her elbow on the arm of the couch, and covered her face with her hand. "Maybe you don't know this, but the first time I even _saw_ a person who wasn't him in the flesh, and they weren't just a little speck I was looking at from my balcony, was just a couple of nights before the opera. I'm getting okay at understanding Graverobber because we're together almost all the time, but you just suddenly show up every so often and act _bizarre_ at me and I have no idea what it's supposed to mean." She cracked open her fingers wide enough to peer at him through the gap with one of her eyes. "Is this friendship? Am I being a horrible bitch for acting like I don't trust a friend enough? I really, honestly, don't know because this isn't something I've ever done before."

She actually managed to catch Luigi off guard, which just plain wasn't something that happened. He'd had lackeys, flunkies, toadies, employees, gofers, pawns, clients, victims, and, of course, family, but he was pretty sure he'd never met anyone who'd actually call him a _friend_ before, even as a question. _Definitely_ nobody who'd call him one to his face. They wouldn't have dared; someone _would_ have to have been a lifelong shut-in to not realize just how high a Largo was above them.

He just avoided the question entirely in the end. "Fine. I'll pretend you didn't act that way, _this_ time, as long as you never do it again. But only because we're stuck in here for an hour before we can have anyone Pavi might ask seeing you leave."

"An _hour?_" she asked incredulously, and he had to force himself to remember that she'd just told him that she didn't know what the fuck she was talking about to keep from blowing up at her all over again over the implied slight to his prowess. And it was a good thing, because it became obvious that she hadn't meant it that way when she went on to say, "What are we supposed to do for an hour?"

He looked her over while considering--scrawny little thing that she was his not-all-that-big couch completely dwarfed her--then shoved himself to his feet. "Food?" he asked, already walking towards the small fridge he kept in his room's connected living area. "You'd probably like something that wasn't dug out of the trash bin for once."

"I don't eat trash!" she exclaimed, turning in her seat to keep watching him as he walked past the couch. "...But something that's not greasy fast food or preserved _stuff_ would be a nice change."

"Yeah, well, wait a minute." His fridge wasn't the best place in the world to go for food--it mostly existed as a place to chill booze when he wanted to, and make ice for same--but he always made sure there was enough in it to keep himself from going hungry for a few meals during those times when one of his siblings did something so overwhelmingly enraging that he couldn't stand the thought of even opening his door when there was a chance of them passing by. There was enough to slap together a couple of sandwiches for her and toss an apple onto the plate for good measure. A drink was a little harder to come by, since he'd be damned before he wasted even a drop of his liquor on an underaged kid who wouldn't be able to appreciate it, but with enough searching he was able to dig up a bottle of lemonade from a pack he'd gotten on a day when it had been hot enough for him to care more about being refreshed than about getting drunk.

It wasn't even until he was walking back towards her that he thought to be surprised at himself for getting the food for her instead of pointing her at the fridge and making her find something on her own. He quickly excused it to himself as not wanting to let her dig through any of his things, even if it was just the fridge.

"You're not getting anything else, so you'd better not complain if you don't like something," he said, dropping the plate and bottle onto the coffee table in front of her. While she tucked in he went back to his desk, figuring he might as well get some paperwork done while she was busy.

"So, you guys really live in the GeneCo building?" she asked after a minute, and he grunted affirmatively in reply. "Huh. I would have thought that you'd have a mansion somewhere. Mansion_s_, one for each of you."

"Pop wanted us available at any time of day or night; he always said GeneCo is _ours_ so we had to be around if there was ever an emergency. Of course, with Amber off getting stoned out of her mind and Pavi hunting faces you can guess who '_we_' meant most of the fucking time." By the end of the explanation his hand was clenched around his pen and the corner of his eye was twitching, though she wouldn't be able to see either from her position. _He_, not Pavi, not Amber, and certainly not Shilo, had been the one who'd always done everything Rotti had asked of him. And he'd been happy to do it because, _fuck_, he'd loved his pop, and he'd loved his pop's company, and he'd loved the _money_ the company made that they wouldn't have as much of if anything ever fell apart, but he'd just been tossed aside when the time came to pick an heir, and for what? Because they had to replace a few employees because of him... per day? There were always hordes of people hoping for a job at GeneCo, he just cleared places for them. At least he wasn't as fucked in the head as Pavi, and didn't pour their money down the drain on surgeries and zydrate the way Amber did.

"That kind of sucks," Shilo said, summing up everything he'd been thinking in a nutshell.

He nodded, once, then gestured towards a door in his back wall. "When you're done, there's a bathroom through there. Take a shower; I don't want my rooms stinking of garbage by the time you leave."

"Oh, thanks!" she said, sounding way more happy and grateful than most people would have been at an insulting brush-off. Just a couple of minutes later, fast enough that she must have completely torn through her food which made him glad that he hadn't been watching her and the appalling table manners she must have been showing, he heard her stand up. Instead of heading straight for the bathroom she walked up behind him, and his chair leaned slightly back when she rested her hands on top of it. "You know, Luigi? Being around you kind of _doesn't_ suck."

He probably would have taken it as more of a compliment if she hadn't sounded faintly surprised at the thought herself.


	6. Chapter Five

He'd planned on never going up to her anywhere in the city where there were plenty of people around who weren't half-braindead from glow. It was too likely that someone might pay close enough attention to recognize him under his hat and start spreading stupid fucking rumors that he liked slumming it. But she'd left her usual alley while he was on his way to her, and like hell was he just going to sit around waiting for her to come back. Luigi Largo didn't _wait_ for anyone.

He found her in an entertainment store in the closest shopping district, a weird little owner-run mess of a place that had sections for everything from reel-to-reel tapes to the latest holorecordings. She was pouring over the selection of CDs, already holding a couple in her hand.

"You're wasting cash on _music_ when you're living on a trashheap?" he asked when he reached her side. Luigi was beginning to think that his dad's disease must have done something to screw up his brain during his last few days, if _this_ was what his almost-chosen heir thought of as a good spending choice.

Apparently, for the moment at least, she'd settled on 'yes, we're friends' as the answer to the question she'd asked the last time she saw him, because she greeted him with a smile. "I don't have anything better to spend it on."

He raised his eyebrows, bemusement the only way he could think of to react to that statement. "You haven't thought for a second about saving up for, say, _an apartment?_"

"I can't do that," she admitted, ducking her head. "I don't really keep that much of the money I make; I let Graverobber have most of it."

"What, he's some sort of fucking _drug pimp_ to you?"

She giggled, pressing her hand to her mouth like that could hide it. "'Drug pimp'? You'd call it that?" she asked, then shook her head. "No, he's not my 'drug pimp'. He never even asked me to give him anything, though he's not the type of person who's going to turn money down when it's offered. I just don't have any debt to pay off, and he does, okay? I can't sit back and _not_ help him out with something like that."

From the way she said it, Luigi could tell that she meant the type of debt that ended in bleeding to death on the street with missing guts five percent of the time. It was interesting information to have; might just come in handy if he ever needed to hunt down dirt on the freak.

But it probably wasn't a subject that he wanted to dig any deeper into for the time being, in case she'd reveal anything _else_ she was doing that was idiotic enough to give him a migraine just thinking about it.

"You're getting _CDs?_" he said by way of changing the subject. "What, are you seventy-fucking-years-old?"

"Blame my dad for that, he liked antiques. I mean, the TV I grew up with was only this big it was so old," she said, indicting a tiny box in the air with her hands. Luigi didn't even know they made them that small, or that thick. "So I can only get music that plays on this ancient Walkman thing I took out of the house with me."

"The Runaways and Siouxsie and the Banshees," he said, reading the names of the bands she'd already picked music for over her shoulder. Then he grabbed her chin and tilted her head upward so he could get a good look at her.

"What are you doing?" she asked, making a face at him.

"Looking for signs that one of our surGENs deaged you," he said, smirking at her. "Those fucking bands were old when my _pop_ was born; doesn't really go against the 'secretly seventy' theory."

She glowered at him. Apparently insulting her musical interests struck a nerve. "They're not old, they're _classic_. And you've obviously never _listened_ to them if you're insulting them; Joan Jett alone is so awesome that she's uninsultable."

"I hear enough screaming women already," he told her, ignoring the way it didn't make her glare at him any less, and looked over the shelves of CDs. It only took him a minute to find what he was looking for and toss it onto her pile. "Here, try some _decent_ music. I'll even fucking treat you."

She looked down at what he'd handed her, and her glare was broken by a small laugh. "Frank Sinatra? And you're calling _my_ music old?" She tapped the fedora he was wearing in the picture on the cover with her finger then looked at Luigi, a smile growing across her face, "I thought the hat was a disguise, not a tribute to fashions from a hundred years ago."

"Sinatra is fucking _timeless_," he informed her, then adjusted his own fedora to a rakish angle, "and so is the fucking hat."

"The hat _is_ pretty okay," she said. After a second she stuck her hand out at him, "Okay, how about this? I'll listen to your music, if you listen to mine."

He examined her hand like it might be crawling with unspeakable germs--which it probably was--before clasping it in a firm handshake. "Deal. But only so you learn some fucking class."

"And you can learn to rock out," she said cheerfully, not rising to the insult again. "I think this is enough for today."

The atmosphere between them was surprisingly light, so he should have realized that something would happen to break it. It wasn't either of them that caused it this time, but her eyes skirting away from him to something over his shoulder that made her face fall like she'd never been smiling at all. He turned to search out what she was looking at, and quickly spotted the display selling recordings of The Opera, complete with a flickering holographic standee of _her_ yanked out of the quickly-becoming-iconic image of her standing in the doorway covered in blood.

"Can't you all _do_ something about that?" she asked, ripping her eyes away from the display and back to him. "You guys can't be any happier about people gawking at _your_ dad dying than I am with them watching mine."

"It's obvious you aren't kidding about having no damned clue how people work," he said, waving off the idea out of hand. "The _second_ we try banning the damned thing, every fucking asshole in the world will be scrambling for an illegal copy, even the ones who try to claim they're too fucking _classy_ to watch crap like that when it's freely available. Acting like we don't give a shit is the fastest way to make them get sick of it."

She ducked down a side aisle instead of continuing to the checkout counter, finding a bench she could collapse onto and then burying her face in her hands. "I guess you're the one who'd know. And maybe it's easier for you; _your_ dad would be proud of you guys, for completely proving him wrong about how well you could run the company. My dad wanted me to the change the world, and I'm dealing drugs on the street." she mumbled through them. Then her entire body shuddered once. "Mostly I just really hate that complete strangers who weren't even there know more about that night than I remember."

"You can't remember?" he asked, gingerly settling himself onto the crappy little bench beside her. Well, _that_ explained a thing or two. He'd thought that winning her over had been a little easier than expected, even if she hadn't noticed him stabbing her old man.

"Not much," she admitted. "It all blurs together, except for the big moments; finding out about the drugs, your dad trying to make me shoot mine, my dad dying. It probably would be easier if I hadn't had that last big attack there, but ones big enough to make me collapse always left my brain..." she freed one hand long enough to wave it absently in the air around her head, illustrating her loopiness. "It's dumb, but the thing I remember best through the whole night is that _stupid_ audience, how they all just stared at us without even trying to help. Even if they'd decided that they wanted to side with your dad, at least that would be _doing_ something! I remember that there was this woman right in front of me who was crying even harder than I was after daddy got shot, and I kept thinking, 'If you're that upset, get up here and _help_ him, you stupid _bitch_,' but she just kept staring at us with everyone else like we were just some sideshow." She tilted her head to the side so she could look at him, her brow furrowed deeply enough to make his jokes about her age suddenly seem more plausible. "How can you and your family stand people acting like that around you _all the time_?"

"All right, listen up, because this is the best fucking lesson you're ever going to get about how the fuck people work," he said, drawing himself up straight. "Ninety-percent of the people in the world are nothing but fucking _sheep_. They might be more obvious about it with me and those other two assholes pop's wives popped out, because they know we're the biggest fucking thing the world has ever seen and there's no damned point in even _pretending_ that they could be on the same level as us, but we could be peasants ourselves and they'd just be a little subtler about acting the same fucking way because deep down inside all they want to do is flock around and stare at anyone who has an actual fucking personality. So we might as well learn to put up with it."

"...That sounded really egotistical, Luigi," she said, her lips twitching, almost forming a new smile before they settled back down again. "And not really right. I mean, _I_ don't want to stand around staring at you all the time."

"Ten percent don't." He glanced back towards the display of recordings, considering. She probably wasn't in the best mood to talk about anything that had happened there, but he really needed to get her mind thinking about it soon, and he'd probably never have a better excuse to bring it up. "Hell, you almost became a member of their GeneCo sideshow yourself, if you don't remember. Ever think about what you would have done if that happened?"

"It wouldn't have," she said flatly. "There's nothing he could have done that would have convinced me to kill my father."

"Hypothetically," Luigi said with a frown. "Don't be so fucking prosaic."

"You mean, if he'd just handed it over without any murder?" She leaned backwards, bracing herself on the back of the bench with her arms, and looked thoughtful, then laughed quietly. "I guess I'd have just made you vice-president and then stood out of the way being a figurehead, which would have kind of gone against the whole point of giving it to me. But it's not like _I_ know anything about running a company, Pavi's too creepy to want in charge, and I already knew Amber was a drug addict back then, so you'd have been the only choice."

"So you'd only have fucking picked me because you thought the other two are _more_ awful. Thanks."

She flashed him a quick smile, "It's not like I knew you, back then. I guess I probably never really would have, if things had gone differently that night. I mean, half the reason I thought that maybe you'd be okay to talk to after that first time was because you lost the same thing I did that night."

Luigi privately thought that he'd lost a hell of a lot _more_ than she did. He had lost his rightful inheritance along with his dad, but she'd gained her health and freedom when she lost hers; it was pretty damned obvious who got the better deal out of the night. It didn't even matter that she'd ended up on the streets, seeing as it was her own choice not to live comfortably on what her father had left her.

But he just kept quiet about all that, ignoring her cheesy little 'Maybe we aren't so different after all' aside in favor of getting back to the point. It was good to know that she was fine just being a figurehead, but he still wanted to know going in if there were any ideas she had for what she'd do if she was in charge. If she actually had any that were half-decent, tossing one into action every so often would be an easy way of keeping her complacent. "Every fucking person who's ever dreamed of swiping one of our spots is rolling their eyes at you right now. You seriously don't have _anything_ you'd want to do if you'd gotten the company?"

She sighed, and rubbed her forehead. "I _wish_ you could get rid of the Repo Men. I mean, I understand why they exist--I read everything I could find about them after that night to try and understand more about that parts of my dad's life, and I saw all the facts and figures about how hard it was for GeneCo to make people keep up their payments when they were just happy to still be alive no matter what he did to punish them--but it's still _horrible_. I guess I'd have wanted to figure out if there was some way to restructure the way they work, if they couldn't be gotten rid of all together? Like, no repossessing from children, period; it's not like it's their choice not to pay, or to get surgery to begin with. And maybe have different payment levels, so people who actually _need_ new organs don't need to pay as much as people who just want an orange spleen for fun? Oh! And I'd donate funds towards any scientists who are still trying to find a real _cure_ to the plague. It's stupid that everyone just stopped caring about it because they know replacements are available."

As he watched her prattling on about surprisingly level-headed ideas, Luigi had to wonder if spending her life in a bedroom had left her with no real damned clue just how much wealth and power his family actually commanded. He'd expected to get a list of ways she'd want to spend their cash out of her, not actual fucking _business ideas_.


	7. Chapter Six

Luigi left her alone for a few weeks after that, allowing time for the thought 'What _would_ I have done with GeneCo?' to keep brewing in her mind, and in the meantime he went to work _really_ setting his plan into action.

It wasn't enough for people to just look the other way for her in honor of Rotti, they had to _want_ her. They had to be gathering around water coolers when no Largo was around talking about how Rotti must be rolling in his grave over the daughter who refused to even keep his name taking over the company while the kid he'd wanted in the position was nowhere to be found. He wanted the peasants muttering on the street corners about how much better they thought things would be with her in charge; how she was one of _them_, not someone who'd grown up with a silver spoon in her mouth. He wanted everyone in upper management positions in GeneCo daydreaming about what a tractable pawn a sheltered teenager would make, while they were stuck instead with the most stubborn bitch the world had ever known.

He wanted the whole fucking _world_ whispering Shilo Wallace's name in dark corners when they thought nobody who wasn't on their side was around to hear their treason, until not a single person would speak up on Amber's behalf on the day he lead Shilo through Geneco's front door and straight up to his Pop's old office.

But that took work, made only slightly easier by the fact that Amber's zydrate addiction was getting worse than ever as the stresses of being in charge of the biggest company in the world piled up.

He'd spent an entire night getting the staff of a subversive newspaper that they _thought_ was so far underground that GeneCo had no idea it existed drunk out of their minds. He kept his face carefully hidden the entire time and let them think that they were important enough to be approached by their very own shadowy informer as he kept the conversation constantly circling back to GeneCo's 'true' heir, and wouldn't things be better with her around?

It was the fifth time he'd spent a night like that in the past month, though the company he kept was different every time. He had pirate radio programs preaching her name, websites full of visitors that flocked to other forums to spread the word, he was even thinking of rounding up some street corner prophets and training them to scream her name in the middle of their garbled nonsense.

Nobody had commented on any of the other nights he'd taken off, but this morning was different. As soon as he entered the dining room, still wearing his clothes from the night before, Amber was screeching at him in her most ear-splitting tone, "Where the fuck _were_ you last night?"

"Wherever the fuck I _wanted_ to be, sister" he said, having a servant dish him up a plateful of waffles.

"You can't just leave without saying anything! Do you have any idea what a fucking mess last night was? It's not like _Pavi's_ any help!"

"Ohh," Pavi groaned sadly, then perked up. "Ah, the Pavi thinks he knows where Luigi was last night, little sister!"

"He was at a _bar_, I can smell it from here," Amber snarled. "And don't think I'm going to forget about it the next time you bitch at _me_ about addictions."

"Si, that too. But Pavi knows why he's been disappearing so _often_ lately." Pavi leaned towards her like he was offering up some grand secret and stage-whispered, "Luigi has found a singora to pass his time with."

"Shut the _fuck_ up, Pavi!"

"_Ha!_" Amber burst out, more of an exclamation than an actual laugh. "One who isn't already in a body bag?"

"Startling, yes? But the Pavi found many people who saw her leaving safely with Luigi the night Pavi saw her, with no wounds at all!" He dropped his voice further, looking slyly at Luigi even though he was still acting like he was directing his words at Amber. "They were all so surprised to be able to say that she and our brother seemed to be talking happily on the way out."

"'Happily'?" Amber and Luigi repeated at the same time, then shared a disgusted look with the other.

"Luigi's never _happy_," Amber continued with a sneer before Luigi could go on.

Not that he'd been planning on saying anything more. He'd just been surprised enough to wonder whether it was him or the people Pavi had asked who had read her wrong that night, when he'd thought she was just anxious to finally get back to her dumpster before her filthy guardian started to worry.

"Happy for Luigi, perhaps they meant," Pavi deferred. "But, for certain, Luigi has not been here so often since that night, and the Pavi does not think it's because he was taking care of company business."

'The' Pavi obviously didn't know shit, but it wasn't like Luigi could say that without being questioned about what he meant.

Strangely enough, Amber seemed drained of her previous anger, turning most of her attention towards waving for more juice. "God, I guess I should just be happy that someone _else_ in this family is learning how to get along with someone without killing them by the third time they see them. Now why don't you try using those lessons to go a day without killing an employee sometime?"


	8. Chapter Seven

It was raining the next time he found her. She was shivering under a store canopy looking like a wet rat, or maybe like the cheapest fucking prostitute the world had ever known.

"You _seriously_ won't even go home long enough to get a fucking _raincoat_?" he asked when she looked up at him.

"I don't _own_ a raincoat," she replied, her teeth chattering hard enough to garble the words. "I wasn't allowed outside, remember?"

He stared at her, still dressing in her tiny little skirts and light little tops even though winter was getting close, and wondered how the hell she hadn't gotten sick yet. "This is fucking _idiotic_," he finally said, and dragged off his coat to toss it over her.

He turned to walk back to his car, expecting her to follow but still faintly pleased when he heard her footsteps right behind him. She was getting well-trained.

"Take us to my tailor, now," he told his driver once he was at the car, giving her a look to tell her to get in at the same time.

"I know how much you like rubbing in the whole 'I sleep in trash' thing," she said as she settled down, "but I'm not going to ruin your coat just by wearing it. You don't need to get a new one _now_."

"First of all, the lining of that coat is silk, and you're soaking wet, so yes you fucking _are_ going to ruin it by wearing it," he was quick to point out. It was an expensive coat, so she'd _better_ realize that she was going to be responsible for its water stains. "And we're not going for the fucking coat; _you're_ getting some decent clothes."

"Decent?" she repeated, then her eyes narrowed. "Hey! My dad picked out all of my clothes for me!"

Luigi really hadn't needed to know that Nathan Wallace had had even _more_ issues than he'd already known about, if he'd been picking out dresses for his daughter short enough for her to flash the world every time she bent over. "You want to freeze to death in the middle of December because you don't own a single fucking outfit made out of more than a yard of fabric?"

"Well... no," she admitted, but frowned. "I don't have enough money to buy tailor-made clothes," she said, and, when he snorted, added, "I'm not letting _you_ buy me any either."

"As if I'd waste the money on clothing that was just going into the garbage," he said. "I know you've got _issues_ with touching your daddy's money, but you don't fucking have to. The company still has access to his accounts; I can get the money out of them and _you_ can tell yourself that you still haven't let your pretty little hands touch a single red cent of it."

She closed her eyes tightly, looking disgusted with the very idea, but slowly she said, "He really was a doctor before he became a Repo Man, right? So, I guess he probably saved up enough from that job to pay for some clothes."

Luigi just rolled his eyes. Whatever helped her sleep at night; it wasn't like the clothing she was wearing had been paid for out of some _other_ money.

The tailor was closed when he reached it, but it didn't matter. He banged on the door until the man came out, and instantly his demeanor switched from annoyed to sycophantic when he saw who it was. "Mr. Largo!" he exclaimed, unlocking his door as quickly as he could and getting out of the way. "Come in, come in! What do you need?"

Luigi gestured at Shilo. "Measure her for a winter wardrobe. Whatever you think she needs to not freeze her tits off."

The tailor froze for a moment, looking at her, then laughed, "Oh, you're making a joke! Mr. Largo, sir, you know that I only make _mens_wear."

"Then I guess it's time to find out if an old dog really _can_ learn new tricks!" Luigi said in a tone of faux-joviality, his eyes sharp. "Damn, you've always done such a good job that I'll hate to have to replace you if it turns out you _can't_ do what I want."

The tailor had been around him often enough to recognize the threat, and went pale. But he made one last effort to avoid the job; "Perhaps, Mr. Largo, you might consider taking her to Miss Sweet's clothier instead?"

Luigi's eyes narrowed. "No, she's _not_ going to where that bitch gets her outfits. I brought her here because I knew you could make something with some fucking _class_, not because I want her looking like a slutty fucking _cunt_! Do you understand?"

He felt a hand on his elbow and snapped around to glare down at Shilo, who no longer even flinched away at the look. "This really isn't worth getting so angry about, Luigi," she said calmly, and somehow some of the anger really did start draining back out of him. "I'd be happy just with sweaters off the rack from somewhere."

"Oh no, Miss, please, don't do that," the tailor said, reaching out to gently tug her away from Luigi and push her towards his measuring station. He was actually fucking _frightened_ for her, Luigi realized from the look on his face. As if, after all the bullshit Luigi'd put up with from and because of her over the months without ever so much as smacking her on the wrist, he'd suddenly snap and off her over something as fucking benign as her distracting him when he was pissed at someone else. Of course, the bastard didn't _say_ as much, instead coming up with the excuse that, "Even the most clumsily made outfit that I could create would be better than anything you would find mass-produced."

"She's a fucking street urchin, so don't bother wasting any decent fabrics on her," Luigi chipped in as the tailor began to take Shilo's measurements.

"Are you _ever_ going to get tired of coming up with new ways to insult me about that?" she asked, glaring at him in the mirror that was positioned in front of her.

"Listen to me one of the times I tell you to suck it up and find a fucking _apartment_ and I won't need to keep it up," he shot back. He eyed the small selection of premade clothing available at the front of the store, and grabbed a black shirt that looked his size. "I'll be taking this too," he said, flashing it at the tailor. "The hell I'm going to keep walking around in a shirt that's soaked enough to be see-through. When you're done with her, see if you can find something in the kids sizes she could wear out of here too."

He ripped off his old shirt, and heard a gasp. When he looked up, Shilo was still looking at him in the mirror, but now her eyes were focused on his chest and the scars snaking across it. "If you want to ogle me, I can take off the ascot so you have a better view," he said, raising an eyebrow at her.

"Vain," she said, more absently than as a sarcastic rejoinder. "What the hell happened to you. _That_ doesn't look like a surgical scar." She tapped her own collarbone to indicate exactly which one she meant.

"Lucky bastard with a knife," he said, touching that one, and then a few more. His hand settled across the one slashed across the area above his liver, "Too fucking much booze," then moved up to trace the two well-faded ones beneath his ribcage, "Lungs. Any more questions?"

She tilted her head to the side. "What, did you used to smoke too?"

"No, I didn't fucking smoke! I was _ten_."

"But aren't you old enough that that would be... before designer..." She blinked, then her eyes widened with realization but she didn't say anything, just kept silently staring at him as she waited for him to confirm or deny her suspicions.

"That's right, you're looking straight at GeneCo's first fucking patient," he said with a smirk. "Not that you'll find that on any records, since Pop still had a year worth of hoops to jump through before he could open up the company and start curing the masses."

She looked sad at the information, but he didn't know why. For all that Pavi liked to taunt him about his false first-generation lungs, he was fucking _proud_ of the place that gave him in history. The whole goddamned world dominating company was built up from his shitty original organs, and even if there hadn't been any other good reason on Earth for why he should have been the one to inherit it, that should have been enough all on its own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally written back before Luigi's Myspace (or Twitter, whichever it was) revealed that his liver's the only thing he's had replaced, so please ignore that the end of the chapter's since been jossed. The idea was based on the scar under his ribcage combined with Pavi's line "all bark but no lungs, Brother" in _Mark It Up_.


	9. Chapter Eight

It was _luck_ that he was watching her when it happened, fucking unpredictable luck that could have had him off doing a million other things and never realizing that she was in trouble until she showed up in the morgue.

She should have fucking _known_ better than to try to take care of new faces in her little junkie alley on her own, or should have at least realized that the three men were obviously a lot more clear-headed then the usual harmless, brainless, Z-zombies. She sure as hell shouldn't have let them convince her to go down a more private branch of the alley to take care of business.

Stupid fucking people-ignorant _shut-in_, half a year she goes distrusting everyone in the world but the graverobber and Luigi himself and the one time it was actually necessary she went and let down her guard.

And what the _hell_ were the odds that she'd be attacked right after she'd finally _stopped_ dressing like she'd spread her legs for anything that asked?

He _wished_ that it had been something he'd planned. That he'd paid some lowlifes to rough her up so he could play hero and weasel a little more of that trust out of her. The thought that she might have been hurt or killed under uncontrolled circumstances was fucking _enraging_ to him, the fury burning more fiercely in him than it had in months. He'd damned well claimed her, whether she lived or died was _his_ decision, and no back alley trash was going to take it from him.

He threw open the door to his car and leapt out the moment he recognized that one of the men standing behind the one she was talking to was slipping a knife out of his sleeve, a movement Luigi could have recognized anywhere after the million times he'd performed it himself. Even as he did so the ringleader suddenly lunged at her, but she'd become so quick at dodging at a moment's notice over the months that he wasn't nearly fast enough to grab her. If she'd just had the sense to run back out into the crowded main alley it would have been fine, she would have been able to spot Luigi immediately and get the hell behind him, but in another stunning display of idiocy she headed in the opposite direction. He sure as hell _hoped_ that she was at least thinking she'd be able to hide in the darkness there, and wasn't just mindlessly fleeing in the direction she found herself facing after the first dodge.

They chased her, Luigi chased them, and it was like some sort of fucking race except that he knew he'd be losing a lot more than a gold medal and a pat on the back if he came in too far behind.

He reached them all at a dead end, and was glad to see that she was at least fighting them tooth and claw though she was too damned scrawny to hold out unarmed against three grown men for long. "Come on, kid, just let us have all the zydrate and a little fun and we'll let you go perfectly fine," the leader was trying to say to her as the other two closed in, the lies obvious in his voice. They were the last words he'd ever have a chance to say, Luigi purposely stabbing through his larynx with his sharpest knife before going after the carotid arteries. The blood started to pulse out immediately but Luigi didn't stop to watch him fall, knowing it would only take seconds.

Shilo saw him, but when she opened her mouth to call out to him he gave her a curt shake of his head that kept her quiet. He wasn't giving up a single of the few seconds that he had the element of surprise on his side. They were what let him get close enough to drive his knife into the back of the next bastard. He bellowed in pain and lashed around to see who was there, which only made things worse for him as Luigi kept the blade of the knife pressed into him as he turned. A few more stabs were all it took.

He'd thought that the last one might be a little more difficult, actually knowing that he was there and all, but he was as pathetically easy as the others. He wasn't shit with his knife, but _no one_ was as good as Luigi. He didn't stand a chance.

Every last one of them was down, their blood everywhere, but Luigi was still as angry as he'd ever been before in his life. He wanted to kill _more_, to slash, and stab, or even just pick a trash can off the ground and bludgeon any person he could find until he could finally be calm.

But there was only one other person there, and when he looked at her he almost dropped his knife from shock when he realized that the killing rage refused to settle on her. It spread out around him in every direction, looking for something he could focus it on, but when it reached her it just slid right past. That had never happened before, _ever_. There'd been people he wasn't _allowed_ to kill, the list basically made up entirely of his family members and Mag, but that didn't mean he'd never _wanted_ to. When he was in a blind rage like this over them the most he'd ever been able to do was grab the first unlucky bastard who walked by and redirect it towards them, leaving him unsatisfied at not getting his chosen target even if it cooled his head down.

He didn't _want_ to see Shilo dead? It was a strange new thought, but one that seemed to ring true when he poked at it.

Not that he had much time to do that, since a second later she was flinging herself at him. "Thank you, Luigi," she said, her entire body shaking against his. "_Thank you._"

"What the _fuck_ did you think you were doing?" he shouted at her. Just because he didn't want to kill her, didn't mean that he wasn't pissed the hell off at her in other ways. "Where the fuck is that fucking graverobber of yours, and why the hell would you follow those bastards down here without him?"

"I thought it would be okay."

"Because following strange men down dark alleys is really something people walk away from all the fucking time."

"I _thought_ it would be okay," she repeated, her face twisting. "He... the leader, he kind of reminded me of you. So I didn't think he'd do anything."

Good fucking grief. Out of every damned way in the world his plan could have blown up in his face, it went and did so in a way that would have made _anyone_ else laugh in her face if they heard it. She thought that she'd be safe because he'd reminded her of _Luigi Largo_; it was like the set up to some bad fucking joke. And what could he even say to that? 'Don't trust me, you idiot,' when that would not only screw up all the work he'd put into her, but when he'd just realized that maybe she possibly could, at least as far as not hurting her was concerned? If it wasn't just a one-time aberration.

"And you didn't even have a fucking weapon in case you were wrong," he just said tiredly, then slid his hand into his coat to produce another knife. "Here, take it. Don't make that fucking mistake again."

It was his own first knife, first and favorite and never far from his side even though he'd long since taken to only using more flashy looking ones. It had been a gift from one of his dad's old girlfriends, back in the time before Marni, one who'd wanted to make a good impression on Rotti Largo's oldest child and figured that all boys liked weapons. He couldn't have remembered her name if he'd tried, but he'd never forget the knife. It was just an old trench knife, simple and to the point without even one of the interesting designs that some of them could boast, but the first time he'd ever slid it into a person it had been the most perfect feeling that he'd ever experienced. Over time its wooden handle had been worn by his grip and the flat of its blade had lost some of its shine, but he still kept it as sharp and well cared for as it had been the day he'd gotten it.

But she didn't seem to realize what a great gift it was. "I don't even know how to use a knife," she said. "I mean, aside from the sharp part being what you hurt people with."

He grabbed her hand and forced the handle into it. "I'll start to teach you how to use the fucking thing the next time I'm out here. Until then, I _think_ you can get by with 'sharp part hurts' as long as you don't do something that stupid again." He finally stopped to look her up and down, making sure she was all in one piece. "Those bastards didn't get you anywhere?"

"No. Well, not enough to worry about." She twisted her arm around so he could see where her sleeve had been sliced open, the flesh below cut deeply enough that it definitely needed to be cleaned up, though it wasn't as bad as it could have been; the knife had only missed the cephalic vein by a hair. "It's a good thing you got me these clothes; I bet I'd have been cut a lot deeper with all that fabric in the way. It hurts, but not enough to keep me from moving my arm the way I want or anything. I just need to go to the drug store and get some bandages."

"To hell with that," he said. "Come with me. You're not sleeping in a dumpster with an open fucking wound, you idiot. No drug store wants you bleeding all over their merchandise anyway."

"I'll be fine, I just need to make sure it's covered in antibiotic gunk," she argued.

He didn't know how the hell he'd gotten saddled with the only girl in the world who'd try to argue in favor of letting her _stay_ on the street. But he wasn't even going to waste energy on it. "No. Now move your fucking feet."

He kept a first aid kit in his car for those times when he felt like having an actual knife _fight_ instead of just a stabbing spree, and he pulled it out after ordering his driver to take them to the closest GeneCo surGEN's clinic. "Wait, I-I don't want any surgery," she stammered, but snapped her mouth shut at the look he gave her. Though she still seemed wary she took off her jacket and allowed him to slice off her bloody sleeve peaceably enough when asked and let him poke at the cut. After spending most of her life 'sick' she was probably used to that sort of treatment.

When he cleaned away the blood he could see that it was a little deeper at one end that it was along the rest of its length, possibly deep enough to need a stitch or two put in. For the time being he just wrapped a bandage around it so she wouldn't bleed all over his car seat and then waited, ignoring the few more attempts that she made to tell him she really didn't want to go to a surGEN.

When they reached the clinic he was pleased to see that even though they were off in the slums it had a clean and professional-looking front, and was just as tidy within. At least some of the underlings in the company still knew how to run a business, even under Amber's slipshod leadership. Shilo hovered by the door while he strode up to the bored-looking gentern who was doubling as a receptionst and said, "Someone sliced open the girl's arm. Take care of it."

"Of course." The gentern stood up and offered Shilo a blandly pleasant smile. "If you'll follow me, Miss, we just need to match your skin tone and then it's a simple matter of removing the damaged flesh and--"

"Not _that_ fucking kind of taking care of it," Luigi snapped, grabbing the gentern's shoulder before she could get any closer to Shilo. "What you're _going_ to do is dig the memories of the fucking nursing courses I _know_ you had to pass to get this job out of your head and treat her like someone who doesn't _want_ to replace pieces of herself every time she gets a fucking scratch."

She blinked at him, then her eyes went wide and terrified as she recognized him. "I... Yes, Mr. Largo. I'm sure that won't be a problem. Just follow me and I'll... see what I can do."

Shilo finally pulled herself away from the door and started to follow the gentern, but she hesitated at the start of the hall leading deeper into the clinic and looked up at Luigi. "Thank you. For not trying to make me get it fixed her way just to avoid a scar."

He snorted and rolled his eyes, pushing her onward. "We need to get your fucking memory checked while we're here if you think I give a damn about scars."


End file.
